Combining the distinction between institutional and discursive opportunities suggested by Koopmans et al. with boundary construction theories we compare models of ethnic diversity governance in Portugal and Brazil and the differentiated ways collective identities are inscribed in the political and public sphere. Discursive opportunities are social and cultural constructions that define relations between otherness and the political and symbolic space of the nation state; institutional opportunities comprehend the objective opportunities for gaining recognized access to decision-makers and the legitimation of collective representations and representatives. This approach allows us to highlight the importance of national auto-conceptions and the institutional structure for the visibility and legitimation of certain collective categories. While there is a wealth of research comparing European models between themselves; European countries and Latin American ones are seldom compared. This lack is all the more outstanding when both regions are quite often entangled when it comes to colonial and postcolonial narratives. By studying shifts in the organization of discourse and institutional rearrangements to accommodate racial and ethnic diversity we conclude that in Brazil there is a recovery of primordial identities, whereas in Portugal interculturalism is the mainstreamed language striving for the dilution of these identities. We then define four different cultural and institutional repertoires in terms of identity building, structural integration, boundaries between groups and modalities of ethnicity construction. The plurality of repertoires in the Brazilian context is contrasted with the uniformity of the Portuguese repertoire. These repertoires suggest different strategies of ethnic and racial categories inscription in the state and public sphere.

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collective identity,repertoire,multiculturalism,interculturalism